CHAPTER ONE

      THE three men stood in close proximity.

      Tall. Dark. Silent.

      Clad in uniform black leather, motorbike helmets dangled from one hand. They each held an icy, uncapped bottle of lager in the other hand.

      Moving as one, they raised the bottles and touched them together, the dull clink of glass a sombre note.

      Speaking as one, their voices were equally sombre.

      ‘To Matt,’ was all they said.

      They drank. A long swallow of amber liquid. Long and slow enough for each of them to reflect on the member of their group no longer with them. Cherished memories strengthened by this annual ritual but there was an added poignancy this year.

      A whole decade had passed.

      Two decades since the small band of gifted but under-challenged boys boarding at Greystones Grammar school had been labelled as ‘bad’.

      The label had stuck even as the four of them had blitzed their way to achieving the top four places in the graduation year of their medical schooling.

      But now there were only three ‘bad boys’ and the link between them had been tempered by the fires of hell.

      Minimally depleted bottles were lowered but the silence continued. A tribute as reverent as could be offered to anything that earned the respect of these men.

      The sharp knock at the door was inexcusably intrusive and more than one of the men muttered a low oath. They ignored the interruption but it came again, more urgently this time, and it was accompanied by a voice.

      A female voice. A frightened one.

      ‘Sarah?